Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday February 11, 2010 @04:30PM
from the applied-psychology dept.

the3stars writes "'Removing part of the brain can induce inner peace, according to researchers from Italy. Their study provides the strongest evidence to date that spiritual thinking arises in, or is limited by, specific brain areas. This raises a number of interesting issues about spirituality, among them whether or not people can be born with a strong propensity towards spirituality and also whether it can be acquired through head trauma."
One critic's quoted response: "It's important to recognize that the whole study is based on changes in one self-report measure, which is a coarse measure that includes some strange items."

people can be born with a strong propensity towards spirituality and also whether it can be acquired through head trauma
Weeellll... that's one way to get it I guess.

Definitely adds a very interesting potential to the story of Saul (St. Paul) who was famous for persecuting the Christians before he was thrown from his horse on the road to Damascus, and saw "a light from heaven", after which he heard Jesus speak to him and was converted. The official story [wikipedia.org] is that he saw the light first, and was then thrown from his horse - but head trauma has a funny way of messing with the memory of the sequence of events...

It's an interesting talk about how while schizophrenia may be the result of a full expression of a recessive gene, the schizotypal may be a mild expression of the same gene, leading to people like shamans. That would tend to support your "born with a strong propensity"...

They already have it. It is called MDMA, which you already seem to be aware of. Get some of the pure crystalline form and I guarantee you a religious experience. (Not just some random pill that could contain any number of substances.) Listening to the first Stone Roses album also helps.

Yeah, you can make someone a lot happier with a lobotomy too. And stupid people who don't *use* their brains are often amused by the human equivalent of shiny keys (aka "reality television"). And people who drug themselves into a brainless stupor are are often in a complete euphoria (even a rat-infested, filthy trailer becomes paradise with just a little dab of meth).

But the rest of us, stuck with all of our fully-functional brains, are forced to sometimes contemplate serious matters that aren't so happy. Sure, we sometimes get depressed. But humanity probably wouldn't make much scientific, intellectual, or cultural progress if everyone was walking around every day drugged-up and lobotomized, with stupid goddamn grins on their faces.

That's very true however FWIW I read somewhere that Newton had claimed he'd gained many of his initial insights about physics and mathematics while in process of re-translating the bible to English. Only having read a couple recent popular English translations myself, it seems a bit strange as a source for that type of inspiration but I'd also read that he was not the only huge figure in science that claimed this.

I think maybe it is possible that there are times in human history when in certain societies b

Newton would have been branded a heretic, but only because he had non-mainstream beliefs about the trinity. He was deeply religious. (I thought it was in a Nova program on Hulu, but I can't find it now.)

Newton was also known for his work in alchemy. He enjoyed his share of share of toxins (like mercury). Don't get me wrong, Newton was sheer brilliance. I'm able to be taught calculus, but to make that leap intuitively is absolutely amazing. That doesn't mean he wasn't damaged.

I saw a video by Neil deGrasse Tyson called "God of the Gaps" [youtube.com], highly recommended. He points out that even the most incredibly brilliant people invoke God add the edge of their intelligence. For Newton, he managed to come out with incredible breakthroughs in motion, energy, gravitation, and math. But when Newton couldn't mathematically balance the "6 planets" in stable orbits, he decides it must be God. He quits trying to understand and explore it after that, as do a great many intelligent people in history. The disturbing thing is that it means that that once "God" is accepted as an answer, they are either unable or unwilling to explore that subject further. God is the antithesis of discovery.

Back in those days, to be taken seriously at all, one had to claim strong religious affiliation and belief. Hell, even today a person cannot become president of the U.S. without being Christian and attending a particular church. (Yeah, I know Jefferson was supposedly an atheist or agnostic, but some of his most famous quotes contain references to god which is kind of my point. He may have been atheist, but had to speak of god to people would accept him.)

GP simply knows nothing about psychology/neurology. Religion is literally what one could call a simple form of... well... “schizophrenia”. Now this might leave some people insulted. But you have to know, that that is actually a useful tool, to keep us surviving. So if you call it “bad” depends on your point of view. (Like everything in psychology and every mutation.)

You see, humans MUST at all times have a working inner model of the outer world. Or else we are unable to predict any r

I do have problems when you start defining "warm fuzzy feelings" as spirituality because spirituality is not a feeling.

Lol. YOU just defined it as a feeling yourself - "you realize he is there and strive to live differently as a result?"You can disclaim that as a feeling all you want, but "realizing" something that is intangible is pretty much by definition nothing more than a feeling.

Then you should have no problem that I believe that your "spirituality" is nothing more than chemicals in your brain giving you a "warm fuzzy feeling". Nothing wrong with that, I just achieve the same effects through gin, not religion.

just achieve the same effects through gin, not religion.
Alcohol does not give you the same effect as deep spiritual practice, at least for most people. I'm assuming you are not referring to the card game here. And religion is not the same as spirituality. You sir sound like you might be ignorant of a very important and beneficial part of life. I say this as an atheist.

If alcohol does not give you the same effect as deep spiritual practice, then you are drinking the wrong kind of gin. And cheap gin is not the same as fine spirits. You sir sound like you may be ignorant of this very important and beneficial part of life. I say this as someone with a sense of humor, who understands things like satire and tongue-in-cheek humor.

Yeah, you probably also prefer the more balanced approach of Fox News.

But you're right, in part, in that this does not invalidate spirituality. But it does explain spirituality. It's an attempt to accurately define what spirituality is. And it appears that it's chemicals in your head. It does not invalidate it any more then lightning is invalidated by knowing that it's a transfer of electrons.

Not that any of the grandparents implied that spirituality isn't real. Just your personal view of spirituality

Religion is not exactly about individual spirituality; it's an organisation of many people (if I have to state the obvious...)

The sensible thing to do is not judging religions on the basis of what they (or their vocal speakers specifically) claim to represent, but by their actions - and if some pitiful affairs are a consistant element of given religion, then that is also what this religion represents deep down.

So one might say you, even when doing righteous things, are captured by colaterall damage of disho

I think it's more subtle and complex than that. Religion is like a virus that has benefits to its host. It transmits certain successful memes and in exchange it replicates itself. It cannot be denied that simply telling people to "be good" does not motivate them to act wisely. But giving a loving environment to practice kindness and support for each other is what religion excels at. As an atheist, I wish I had more such structures for myself. I turn to mens teams and personal development for finding more evolved and kind people.

It's still hijacking. "A loving environment to practice kindness and support for each other" is family, often quite extended. And that's governed by more basic instincts. On the "loving" level, the succesful religions are mostly tapping what's already there. It's getting a bit fuzzy on the level of tribe; religion certainly can help it to be somewhat bigger and more stable, hence giving bonuses when competing (OTOH it also gave certain level of religious tolerance when larger loose society did form - "our g

Again. No universal definition of "spiritual" exists. An australian abo, a Buddhist, or a Muslim Sufi all see it differently.

I, and probably most of the people on Digg or Reddit, don't hate religious people OR Christians. I suspect that they DO hate it when small groups of "spiritual people" of sect X decide to legislate political matters based on unprovable, mythologically based views of the world. This affects everyone directly and has provably cause great harm to gays, jews, puritans and anabaptists.

Whether the universe was created by an omniscient superbeing(s) or not, does it matter? None of them have shown up this morning offering to help me with anything, any more than I would show up at an anthill 100 miles north and offer to help ant number 3432. Besides, if they DO exist, all bets are off. They can effect your memory and make you believe anything they want.

Spirituality can well be a "feeling." There's no commonly accepted criterion. Many of my spiritual moments have include "feelings."

Finally I'd like to conclude that spirituality is not a "feeling". I don't wake up one day and say I feel more spiritual than another day. Spirituality is your relationship with God. Do you dismiss God and go about your way, or do you realize he is there and strive to live differently as a result?

It absolutely is a feeling. People don't arrive at faith in god through logic. They may employ post hoc rationalization to obfuscate the issue and try to convince themselves and others that they did, but "realizing God is there" is a spiritual feeling, not an intellectual deduction.

I'm reminded of the study in skeptic magazine that, to paraphrase, found that people who believed in god tended to claim that they arrived at their belief in rational ways, but that they think others arrived at their faith through feelings and a desire for comfort and a sense of purpose. I thought that was interesting. It indicates that people recognize feelings as a big motivator for belief in god, but that they are also uncomfortable with admitting to being anything less than perfectly rational. Your denial of spirituality being a feeling coupled with your focus on god defining your life and how you should live it indicates to me that you're the kind of person who needs that comfort and purpose from an outside source, but is uncomfortable admitting to it.

Its all about control of the subject. Society fears people that can't be controlled. Laws work for most of us, but it doesn't for some. Think about it you don't know if the person might spontaneously kill someone. Unlikely almost all of the time. You have no idea how they will react to situations so they are labeled dangerous. They used to dose people with insulin causing convulsions to make them more sedative. That can't be health no matter how you look at it. Most of the treatments are for society's benef

Well, a lobotomy reduces the patient's capacity for introspection and self-consciousness. So what you write is true of lobotomies.

That said, it's premature to characterize these results as "blissful ignorance". In fact the researchers pinpoint two areas: the right angular gyrus and left inferior parietal lobe. It's intriguing that both of these areas are related to arithmetic abilities, but that's all the result is -- intriguing. We don't know whether it's the same thing going on in both cases, or whether either case is related it any way to what we think of as "spirituality".

You can look at the things these areas of the brain are supposed to do and make all kinds of interesting conjectures, but it could be something as simple as some of these patients not being able to understand the sense of the questions being put the them, or others not being able to monitor the kinds of emotional sensations they're being asked to report on. One area is believed to be used in the understanding of metaphors, the other in terms of bodily awareness.

Why do you think that happiness is the same as stupidity? In my experience, many people go from blissful ignorance (childhood) to unhappy ignorance (teenagers) to arrogant unhappiness (young adulthood) to resignation (midlife crisis) to mature joy. Some people skip various steps and there are others possible, of course. I'm just saying your view is extremely narrow and not particularly accurate. There are many very intelligent people who live very happy lives, laughing and loving their lives. Just because you are serene and have deep inner peace and happiness doesn't mean you never cry or don't get upset.

Some people around here seem to think the Pope is in charge of all of the Christian world. A post like that getting modded insightful shows the audiences ignorance in this regard. The truth of the matter is that the most fervent bible bashing, science hating, ultra-conservatives come from the ranks of American new age evangelicals.

The Catholic Church does not preach creationism. I went to Catholic schools and there was no blurring of the line between religion and science education.

I too am worried when people start giving scientific reasoning and religious dogma equal weight. I hate when people think they can solve their problems just by saying a prayer. Worst of all is when people look to trivial tricks and oddities and claim they are miracles as though the universe around them isn't miraculous enough as it is. I am not however too worried about the Catholic Church trying to take down science and reasoning as it doesn't have a recent history of doing so and even if it did most Catholics would resist that because they haven't been brought up that way.

So, this is proof that religious people aren't using their whole brain then?

To be less inflammatory, this doesn't really change anything. For a religious person, they would accept that God created the brain in such a way that makes the spiritual experience possible. Why would there not be a physical substrate for that experience?

FTFA: "But spirituality does not seem to involve exactly the same regions of the brain as religion."

I'm guessing it's more of a "lighted, windowed room at night" effect. Sit in a lighted room at night, and you can't see out the windows, because the information you're receiving is much more effective. Turn out the lights, and you can begin to see what's outside of your windows (perhaps a whole city). Perhaps our kinetics and structure (the part of the brain they were cutting up) keep us more grounded i

There is no "right" or "wrong"...there's just survival. Fact is, a certain level of spirituality was beneficial for most of organisms with complex neural system - oversensitive alertness helps survive. False positives in noticing things end up better than false negatives.

There was always a sweet spot of course - too much "internal stimuli" and the organism also was less succesfull in passing its traits. On human level you have complications with fullblown religions and societal dynamics, but it's still esse

Plus it would help with the prejudice that religious people have against atheists.

Take a look at the comments for this article, keeping in mind that the article points out that its definition of "Spirituality" is neurologically different from "Religious" and let me know what the atheist club looks like.

For starters, by definition, an atheist must grant that that their belief "that there is no God" is not based on scientific principle.

you seem to be confusing atheism with anti-theism.

Similarly to the difference between immoral (not moral) and amoral (unrelated to morals), atheism is not "a belief that there is no god", it is "a lack of belief that there is a god" (plural included).

Atheism is the faith that you will not stand accountable for your actions.

In theory, this is true. In practice, it is not. If I dare to call myself a "free-thinking, religious individual" then 95% of atheists will roll their eyes and offer up some ridiculous strawman, as if on command.

Then I will say, "these people do not speak for me; I do NOT consider them to be rational freethinkers." Do you have the have the same integrity to speak against those who identify themselves as religious and spew forth hate?

For starters, by definition, an atheist must grant that that their belief

>>So, this is proof that religious people aren't using their whole brain then?

Err, no.

If there's a part of our brain devoted to religion/spirituality (and since it's such a large part of human experience, I wouldn't be surprised by it), then it means that *atheists* are not using their whole brain.

In fact, over time, the neural map for this region in strict atheists ought to atrophy, making them incapable of being spiritual. Which may or more may not be a good thing, depending on your perspective. But

But I'd bet that in most atheists this region would start getting used for religious-ish things that aren't precisely religions, like belief in ghosts or aliens (more atheists believe in alien abductions and ghosts than Christians), or Gaia ("The earthquake in Haiti was Mother Nature's way of punishing us for global warming!" --Danny Glover) or any one of a number of other ideas that are much less likely to be true than Christianity.

Whoa... you think Christianity's mystical claims are more likely than the e

You are a thing. A Marvelous machine. If you are poked and prodded we can illicit love, hunger, fear...why NOT spirituality? It does not make the phenomena any less real, you've just figured out how to manipulate the machine to do it on command.

Agreed.
Simply because we've found the switch to turn it on doesn't lessen it's meaning. It puts a damper on the whole mind-body-soul trifecta, but that's been a wash for a while now. People are a sub-set of animals, your mind exists as a configuration of your brain, and those warm fuzzies you get from spiritual enlightenment will one day be regulated with a drug. The original purpose and meaning of spiritual enlightenment remains, just without the mysticism. Kind of like sex after it was discovered that it makes babies.

Of course, I'm a little worried about the day that religious nuts can literally over dose on god.

I'll take it a step further. We can manipulate people's ability to see better or worse by messing with their eyes, optical nerves, and occipital lobes. Certainly no one would contend that the "real" world therefore doesn't exist.

Neuroscientist VC Ramachandran (sp?) a bunch of years ago was dealing with patients that had temporal lobe epilepsy. The temporal lobe is in control of 'meaning', it is the part of your brain that recognizes objects for their significance. He found that after an episode the patients had overwhelming feeling of spirituality. The idea is that they were seeing meaning and importance in everything down to individual blades of grass. One of his patients refused any support since he believed he was a prophet and that it was his link to god. (I since have read that many prophets historically have been epileptics such as Ezekiel and Mohamed).

You can find the guy in NOVA (secrets of the mind). He also gave a talk or two on www.TED.com .

In my early teen years I was diagnosed with a form of this epilepsy. The thing not mentioned in the post above is that such form of spirituality goes away somewhat if the condition is dealt with quickly, as happened in my case. Few years later I stumbled upon some info and came to realize that I'm almost a textbook example (for short summary, see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschwind_syndrome [wikipedia.org] )

What many of you can't really grasp, without experiencing it, is how real it feels - basically the question about existence of spiritual part of reality doesn't come into it at all; it's just present, that's...obvious. Only after it lessens the grip, you might ask yourself "what was that all about"?

The thing that it's often exploited by religious "guidance" certainly doesn't help to escape. And with TLE being one of more underdiagnosed forms of epilepsy (heck, it was almost a chance in my case), I wouldn't be surpised if statistically significant number of deeply religious people had a mild form. In case of such, you end up arguing against what is...very much real.

I think most intelligent people who have used psychedelic drugs would attest to this. There's definitely certain things hardwired into our brains, and certain drugs can open up those areas for exploration. LSD and psilocybin both induce a predisposition for religious and spiritual thoughts, as well as many of the patterns and images found in the earliest of art.

It causes me to wonder if the "transcendental meditation" that Ralph Waldo Emerson was always raving about was functionally disabling this portion of the brain through meditation -- which would raise a greater question like: how/why that's possible.

But the quote in the article "It's important to recognize that the whole study is based on changes in one self-report measure" is quite telling. We see a change in a trait, commonly associated in some religions traditions as "spiritual." Interesting, certainly. Meaningful? Probably not.

They use the term "spirituality" like its a defined psychological term. They just chose some arbitrary ideas and declared them to be a measurement of spirituality. Perhaps the worst is "belief in a higher power". If "spiritual" is a basic mental state, then whether or not one agrees with the proposition that X exists is hardly a measure of that state. It would make more sense, but still be utterly bogus, to take belief in angels and an invisible man in the sky as a measure of psychosis.

It's pretty well known that religious epiphanies and other feelings of religiosity, spirituality, or sensations of a "presence" can sometimes be linked to neurological events such as some temporal lobe seizures. (Wasn't this the plot for an episode of House?) It's common enough that there's a section on religious and paranormal experiences [wikipedia.org] in the temporal lobe epilepsy Wikipedia page. There was a good BBC documentary a few years ago on this called "God on the Brain" [bbc.co.uk] (here's a transcript [bbc.co.uk]).

I suppose, if you're that sort of Atheist. But some of us think there is something psychologically valuable in practices like meditation, even if we think it's silly to believe in gods or adopt ideologies centered around gobbledygook.

(sorry, but he does exist and only a fool would attempt to "prove" otherwise)

Alright, I'll accept that he exists. Now, what does he want? When does he want it? How do you know this? Why should I trust your hearsay over the hearsay of others?

The existence of God is the beginning of your problems, not the end. Now you have to prove that he approves of you, and the only thing separating you from a lunatic on the street is hygiene, and the willingness to keep your unfounded beliefs to yourself, at least for most of the time.

Actually, we now know that homosexuality is attributable to differences in the amygdala, and that those differences are developed while in the womb. Homosexual men tend to have amygdalas that resemble those of straight women, while homosexual women tend to have amygdalas that resemble those of straight men.

Since a majority of humans believe a creator, or some entity/force outside of humanity(essentially, the spirituality this study links to), then I would tend to believe that the minority is missing something.

Excellent! So in theory, all we have to do to make something true is convince a majority of humans that it is true! I think the easiest way to do this is to kill people who disagree with you. Before long, you'll have a majority, and you can change the fundamental nature of the universe!

While I do not look for opportunities to attack people who do not believe in God, I have had enough of this shit.

So you don't look for such opportunities, yet are making one right now.

Just because people believe in God(sorry, but he does exist and only a fool would attempt to "prove" otherwise), it does not mean they have an "altered mental status".

Are you sure? What is 'altered' to you? Just different from what you believe?

What you feel you believe does not change reality.When doctors poke a piece of brain and consistently get the same reaction, it doesn't at all matter what you 'feel'. Either you agree with reality and are called 'right', or you state that what is happening in front of your eyes is not actually happening, and people call you 'wrong' (Among other bad names no doubt)

This sounds like someone's attempt to demean a group of people.

Well, sorry you read it that way, but it is not. "Action A gets reaction B" is all it is attempting to say.And really not even that, only that in their very small sample and crude methods this can be inferred but is not enough to be considered 'proof'

Far from demeaning anyone, they are stating the results of a freaking survey!Would you prefer they LIE about what their subjects told them to say?

What if I decided to go out and prove that homosexuality was from brain trauma? I will guarantee that people would ask for my head on a plate.

Actually almost every church in America would be behind you 110% and even help you try to prove that.

Since a majority of humans believe a creator, or some entity/force outside of humanity(essentially, the spirituality this study links to), then I would tend to believe that the minority is missing something.

Well, the majority of humans also felt slavery was perfectly OK. Guess the majority is right.

Another majority of people felt before that a specific minority shouldn't even exist, and began rounding them up for mass extinctions. You feel that is OK too since the majority must be right?

Most people also thought the sun orbits the earth. Guess since the majority thinks it, reality will bend to make it true.

As you admit to being one of those types who feels the mob is always correct no matter if they actually are or not, that says way more about you than if you believe in a god or not.You are a horrible human being, and it has nothing to do with your belief in god, but how little you care about your fellow man.

Now go ahead and mod this as the flame it is (Because just like you, I've had enough of this shit as well)

Buddhism uses the word "illusion" in English, it's true, but not in the sense we usually mean it. In the Buddhist sense a spiritual high - or any other experience - is not so much an "illusion" as it is just another conditioned sensory phenomenon, and it's the qualities of sensory phenomena that are risky to get attached to.

Closer to what you're talking about is what Zen refers to as "makyo" that arise in meditation practice. These are considered hallucinations that should not be pursued.